Diffusion of internet protocols - Measurement framework and empirical analysis of the Finnish mobile market

Abstract

Internet protocols spread to potential adopters through several successive phases, including implementation, acquisition, and adoption of the protocol. This process, called as protocol deployment, involves several stakeholders and varies depending on the deployment environment and the protocol in question. This paper develops a framework for measuring the diffusion of protocols during the different steps of protocol deployment. The framework is then applied to measure how a set of 11 protocols has gradually spread into mobile handset models on sale, handsets in use, and into actual usage in the Finnish mobile market. The results reveal that the protocol deployment is driven by applications, such as web browsing, email and real-time communications. The handset vendors' decisions on which devices the protocols are pre-installed have impact on the diffusion of protocols into handsets in use. However, the identified gap between the capability to use and the actual use of the protocols indicates that the handset acquisitions are largely driven by other factors than the protocols and that the acquisition of the protocol capable products is a poor proxy for adoption. These results are relevant especially for protocol developers that are interested in improving the success rate and adoption speed of their protocols.